


Battistero

by Tyger_Tyger



Series: Battistero [1]
Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: And there's the smut, Angst, Creepy Fluff, Dissociation, Dub con breath play, Dubious Consent, Irresponsible use of Google Translate, M/M, Non-Consensual Drug Use, Non-violent flashbacks, Post-Episode: s02e13 Mizumono, Potential for future smut, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Rough Sex, Scarification, Shameless Florence porn, Strangulation, There's all kind of consent issues I'm not even sure about here sorry, i suck at summaries
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-22
Updated: 2015-04-25
Packaged: 2018-03-14 15:12:03
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 14,530
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3415418
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tyger_Tyger/pseuds/Tyger_Tyger
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Will wakes up in hospital unsure what to believe. He heads off to Florence on the hunt for Hannibal, unsure what he'll do with him when he finds him. </p><p>Assumes a physical relationship occurred between H/W during Will's illness, so potential trigger for Dub Con. I've also taken some liberties with Will's past. The idea for this came before the S3 trailer, so I've kind of ignored it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first time writing in this fandom, so not sure if I've got the tone right. I think this will be a three parter, but I will be super slow to update as writing is like pulling teeth for me at the moment. Which is why I'm posting it WIP, because otherwise I'd end up quitting. 
> 
> I apologise in advance for the pretentious descriptions of Florence. I know very little about art, but do I love that city.
> 
> Feedback received with love (and chewed nails)

There was very little noise to start with, except for the whirls and beeps of intrusive machines which he chose to filter out. There was pain, and light bright enough to blanch out most of everything else, and displaced images in his mind which made little sense. And so Will allowed himself to drift, until this strange reality was all there ever had been, ever could be. 

But then he heard birdsong through a window he didn’t know was open in a room he didn’t know he was in, but he did know it was winter and that those swallows shouldn’t be here out of season. He would watch them when he was fishing, the sun on his back as they swooped and spun catching flies over the water, over the open fields on his walk back. And the river seemed like a better place to be than in this white muted room, so he stayed there and cast his line further and further away before reeling it back in.

Awareness returned to him like waking from a dream in reverse. He could only see one frame at first, drawn blinds and a plastic jug of water and a piece of foam on a short pink stick beside it. He’d seen those things that summer his dad got work fixing the air con system in the old folks shelter and had dragged Will around with him as a spare pair of hands. The nurses would dip the foam sticks in water and wet the mouths of the residents too far gone to drink, the ones whose bodies had decided to follow their absent minds and fade away. 

The next frame there was someone sitting beside him, but he couldn’t tell who it was or what they were saying. The voice was low and monotonous, calming in the same way a distant bell could be, but then that was gone too and there was just the ever present grey light and noise. 

Someone was saying his name but was saying it wrong, no one had called him William since Louisiana and he knew that life was gone. There was pain then, sharp and deep and it wrapped around his mind and flung it forward, back into the hospital, back into the bed and into realization. The voice near him spoke an increase in numbers, and the noise he then knew to be his own pained groan stopped, and the waves receded and the shore was so bare he wondered how he had maintained his drug induced ignorance for so long. 

The doctor said back with us, and recovery, and lucky and rehabilitation. But Will didn’t really hear it, only saw Abigail’s shaking hands dripping red, only heard her wet choking breaths, only remembered the first answers he’d been given when he woke up in the emergency room. Abigail was dead. And Hannibal was gone. 

\-----------

Jack came to see him. He was smaller than before, even with Will looking up at him from the bed. He was thin in the way ill people are, his face hollowed around his mouth. His high collar covered his neck. 

“I’m sorry about Bella, Jack.” Will said, his voice unfamiliar in it’s disuse. Jack only nodded, sat with eyes lowered. Will thought he looked husked, a shed skin now that he had nothing left except early retirement on reduced pension to settle the scandal quietly. 

“Jack, tell me about Italy.”

—————

If Will had any doubts about Jack’s theory they disappeared as soon as he walked out in the city. I could be nowhere else but Florence, not the gaudiness of Rome or the decay of Venice. Florence has it’s share of tourist trinkets and unsanitary waterways, but it rises above them with the aloof indifference of the Duomo, knowing that everything is destined unto dust, and with a calm shrug carries on within it’s own fleeting permanence. The locals buzz between the flocks of tourists on mopeds, mounting pavements and ignoring red lights, and the tourists walk sheep-like gazing up and searching out the top ten sights only. But the buildings, dominoed marble packed so tightly together they tower into the sky, terracotta capped and gently sprawling along the river and further up the hills. The buildings would sing to Hannibal. They would whisper all the things they’d seen, all the blood they’d witnessed, all the riches and petty greed they’d watched thrive and then disintegrate to ash. 

Will walked down the winding side streets leading to cobbled squares or dead ends, chiseled coats of arms and statues littering the corners and ignored, except for the occasional Madonna fresco, glass-protected with a few wilting flowers laid beneath them. Hannibal would absorb the years of history as he walked here, after so many years of America’s youth beneath his feet. He would run his fingers along the carved archways, lay his palm against the marble wall, stand beneath the souring dome of the cathedral and let the golden ascension wash over him. He would appreciate the play of perspective Vasari initiated in the fresco, so that the figures within the tapering dome passed through the Last Judgement and upwards to Heaven. Climbing the steps of the Duomo to view them on their own level reveals the distorted pull of painted flesh, and it would amuse Hannibal to see it. Our distorted view of God reflected back in egg tempura and plaster. 

Even the beggars here would suit Hannibal’s taste. None of the Sharpied cardboard Will was used to, nor the bosom-clasped pleading of the gypsies in Paris or the intimidating men grabbing passing arms to knot coloured thread around. Here cripples still lined the paths to church. The man with inverted knees sits everyday in various disjointed poses outside the Basilica, each evening wheeling his makeshift box back around the square. The old woman prostrates herself across the pavement, motionless with clasped hands upturned beside a cup, and the Romany children run between the market stalls creating distractions while the smallest of them pocket the goods. Just as they have for five hundred years, the fiorentinos drop coins and carry on and the city watches.

The hotel mattress was hard, and reminded Will of the prison cot, and his dreams tugged him back there. He felt the scrape of plastic forced down his throat. Saw Hannibal looking down at him, his face void of the human features he wears in public, regarding Will as though he were a curious insect, potentially as yet undiscovered. He heard Hannibal speaking words he didn’t recognise in a tone Will would use to calm a new stray. 

He woke coughing, grasping at his neck, and finally lay back down when he had caught his breath. His hand strayed low over his belly, unconsciously cupped around the thick curve of his scar. 

He remembered things scrambled, still unsure of what was real and what was twisted with fevered dreams. Unsure if he remembers the bruising grip of Hannibal’s hand behind his knee, or if he just imagined it, and even more unsure of which of those versions he would prefer were reality.

Unsure if the conversations he half remembered actually happened, or whether his own mind had provided Hannibal’s words in Hannibal’s voice.

_“Is this real, Dr. Lector?”_

_“Only as much as anything is real. Which reality are you fighting today, Will?”_

_“I know that stag can’t be real, but I see it as clearly as I see you. Which means either one or both of you are hallucinations.”_

_“You know I am real, Will. You have that knowledge confirmed objectively by my association with your colleagues at the FBI.”_

_“I know that you exist, outside of whatever it is that’s happening to me. I don’t know if the Dr. Lector I’m talking to now is the real one, or a projection.”_

_“How can you determine the truth of that?”_

Will was pretty sure he couldn’t have invented the expression he remembers Hannibal wearing then, the only time he believed he saw a true unfiltered emotional response blur away the mask. He had never seen Hannibal shocked, not even later when he watched a man crawl out of a horse caracas, not when Will had held a gun to his head. Hannibal had looked shocked when Will leapt at him, not with teeth bared and fists clenched but with desperate mouth and hands. 

Flat on his back in Florence, Will felt the humiliation twist in his gut, the physiological response lower which confirmed his dread that even if it were imagination masquerading as memory, it still meant more than he wanted to accept.

—————-

The East doors of the Battistero di San Giovanni were replaced with replicas in the early 90’s, in order to preserve the original 15th century Ghiberti masterpiece. It was the first time many ordinary people would have seen the principles of perspective displayed in a panel sculpture. Will could feel the awe and wonder still stored there from the thousands of people who had stood and wept and absorbed the beauty of the Gates of Paradise. He somehow knew Hannibal had stood here too at one time, in front of the original doors, and had not been moved by the Old Testament stories depicted, but by the mastery of transforming bronze into a living scene of flat relief, at once close enough to touch and also so far away. 

Inside the Baptistery the dome engulfs you with gold, golden light pouring from the ceiling, refracted by a million mosaic tiles each playing it’s own part in the Biblical stories. The image of Christ arrests you, majestic and just and disturbingly large, His open right hand directing the eye towards those judged righteous and accompanied by angels. While His left hand is closing, turned away from those below Him being consumed and swallowed, piked and roasted on spits. Christ the God, the eternal judge, who looks at all man does and determines what is right and wrong. 

Hannibal said killing must feel good to God too, as he does it all the time. Will had rejected the notion of any religion being anything other than stories when he was still a child - the arbitrary cruelty he felt and saw in daily life did not fit with a benevolent creator. Hannibal has no religious beliefs either, Will knew he was only interested in what people do to themselves and others, and in understanding the factors and mechanisms with influence and underpin the consequences. He toyed with people’s lives, within the context of how he knew they would behave and react. If, on the rare occasion, he misjudged it, or ended up with a loose end or inconvenience, he would dispose of them, either cleanly and anonymously or in a way to implicate another - and so begin the game again. 

Will stood inside of the Baptistery beneath the blue horned Devil surrounded by demonic creatures swallowing lamenting people whole. The Devil’s mouth was wrapped around a man, teeth embedded in his flesh as his legs hung limply through the beard, the Devil’s hands already full with the next men he would eat, smaller demons lining up screaming tortured sinners in the endless procession of eternal damnation. 

The Ripper had eaten some part of his victims, every one of them. But Hannibal had not. 

———————

Will was compelled to collect all the Last Judgement frescoes in Florence, as Hannibal collected church collapses. He stared at the faces of the more sanitised damned in the Strozzi Chapel, nuns and bishops and poor and rich. The pied arches of the cloisters were like the inside of the keel of a huge ship, upside-down and out of water. Will closed his eyes and remembered the freedom of being on the boat he’d built in the bayou, floating beneath the sky and above the water getting further from land, sheltered by the canopy and calmed by the smell of the moss. He would turn the engine off and drift, watch the swamp birds wade in the shallows and envy their indifference, try to will away the image of his father’s sad eyes and hollowing face. He hadn’t thought of those times in years, had tried to forget them, but here they came uninvited, as though his mind were trying to remind him how to tell if a memory was real or not. 

He checked his watch, a habit still since he had stopped loosing time, and realised there was a priest standing beside him looking at the frescoes.

“Father,” he began quietly, in passable Italian. “How do you find the devil so you can drive him out?”

The priest regarded him with mild surprise.

“The devil exists in the acts of men.” He clasped his hands behind his back, and Will saw his hands had known hard work. “He tempts us from the righteous path. He is the infectious temptation which would drag us from our holy struggle to a life of unholy indulgences.”

“Yes father. The temptation of luxury.”

———————-


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Philosophising and flashbacks.

Will had hated few people, because he truly understood the depth of what hatred meant. When he was eight he’d seen his drunk neighbour kicking a dog in the backyard, the dog cowering and crying while the wife shouted from the upstairs window, and Will suddenly understood where her bruises came from. He would hear the dog yelping at night when his bedroom window was open, hear their neighbour dropkick the dog out the backdoor, and beg his dad to let him take the dog in. His dad would sigh and shake his head, and say better the dog get beat than their kid, and finally loose his temper when Will wouldn’t let it go. The next summer he saw the dog’s limp body in the garbage, and a white hot rage filled him and sent him running into the neighbour’s house. It earned him a split lip from his dad, when the drunk held Will by the hair and told him if he didn’t teach his son a lesson he’d do it for him, and that once he’d put the kid down he wouldn’t be getting up again. That night was the first time he’d seen tears in his dad’s eyes since his mother’s funeral.

Will hated that man with the righteous simplicity of a child who sees injustice and can’t do anything about it. He wanted him to die, wished he’d crash his car when he was drunk or fall off his fishing boat and drown. Sometimes he’d thought about being the one to do it, when he couldn’t sleep he’d work out ways he could kill him without anyone finding out. When Will was eleven the guy’s kid had found him dead in the kitchen from a heart attack. Will had to stay with him at home during the funeral, and they sat on the front porch in silence throwing a ball for Will’s old retriever Sid. “I know you’re glad he’s dead.” Will told him. “I am too. It’s alright to feel like that, it doesn’t make you a bad person.” The kid sniffed and rubbed his eyes with the back of his hand, and then Will taught him all the tricks Sid could do until they were both laughing. 

Years later Will had envied his younger self that unselfconscious hatred, uncomplicated by the horror of understanding and empathising with the motives of people others called evil. But there is no evil, only the consequences of choices people make, and Will had been feeling and living with them stacked up in his head for years. There were times when he wished for the ability to brand it as evil and strip the murderers of the humanity they denied their victims. But he felt their humanity as much has he felt the humanity of the corpses they left behind, and because of that he could never truly feel hatred for them. He hadn’t even been able to feel hatred for the psychopaths he’d profiled - when he slipped inside their cognitions there was nothing there you could call humanity, only a gaping void where that basic empathy should be. It was like looking out at the world through shark’s eyes, uncomprehending that there was anything truly wrong about what they’d done, except that it had broken a rule they hadn’t ever really acknowledged anyway. 

The Ripper was a psychopath, arrogant in his superiority over his victims and the FBI who couldn’t catch him. But Hannibal was not. He was clever enough to play one, but was able to feel the depths of the complexities and horrors and joys and kindness of human existence, was able to seek them out and extract them from others, and was capable of twisting them in the most terrible ways for no other reason than his own amusement, his own curiosity. Will didn’t believe in evil, but if he did that was how he would define it. 

When Will held the gun to Hannibal’s head in his own kitchen, Hannibal had closed his eyes and resigned himself to Will’s choice of action. Will knew Hannibal was capable of taking out fully functioning FBI Field Agents with ease, as soon as Will had gotten within arms reach Hannibal could have had the gun out of his hands in half a second. Right up until the moment he had closed his eyes. Hannibal was confident that Will would not kill him, but he was unsure. Unsure and willing to let Will choose. 

_“You’re glad you didn’t shot me then, Will. Just as you’re glad the killer you sent in your place did not kill me earlier.”_

_“You’re awfully sure of yourself there, Dr. Lector. Don’t you ever have any doubts about anything?”_

_“I have doubts about many things, nothing is entirely predictable. Night will follow day, as it always has, right up until the time that it does not, and then never will again. The trick is to give doubt room to breathe, and know that you can never truly control anything. You can only control a person to the extent that they allow it, however unaware they are of that, and allow their doubt to do half the job for you.”_

_“Why do I feel like you think you’re coaching me?”_

_“Do you feel like you need coaching?”_

_“Cheap trick. You agreed you wouldn’t lie to me anymore.”_

_“If you offered me the same curtesy. You told me that you didn’t need to pretend.”_

_“You know they’ll call you Hannibal the Cannibal, right? You’re lucky Freddie’s not around anymore, she’d have probably written your Wiki page.”_

_“Will. Please don’t be vulgar.”_

_————————-_

_________Will wakes gasping, from a dream he’s unsure is memories or imagination. His body had been burning, his feet bloodied from dragging them bare through the woods, but somehow he’d taken his phone with him and called Hannibal, although he has no memory of the conversation and only knows he did it at all because the screen is still bright with the call log. He looks away and into the dark to let his eye accustom, to try to orientate himself. The dogs aren’t with him, so he must have gone out through the back door, which means he’s gone into the valley. He finds the North Star, and heads uphill in the right direction._ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

_________On the ridge he sees the glow of his house through the trees and mist, like a bright boat anchored at sea, gently bobbing on the swell. Like a lighthouse, the solid beams of Hannibal’s car swing around it, and Will can’t believe he’s been walking back for the hour is must have taken him to drive there. There are two sets of tire tracks in the snow, almost on top of each other, which doesn’t make sense because it snowed that afternoon and no one had been out to Wolf Trap for days. But then Hanniabl’s coat is wrapped around him, and he’s nearly tripping over the dogs because his legs are too stiff to move properly, and Hannibal says a word he’s never heard before but the dogs know that tone and back away to their beds, whimpering concern. Hannibal lowers Will onto the couch, but Will grips his shoulders and pulls him down on top of him, runs a hand over his back and holds him tight as though he belongs there, as though he’s been there before._ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

_________“Will, I need to go and get you some dry clothes and blankets. I need to warm you up.”_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

_________“I’m too hot.” Will whispers hoarsely, hooking a leg around Hannibal’s._ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

_________“You have a fever, Will.”_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

_________“No, no just stay here.” Will nuzzles his face into Hannibal’s neck, presses his lips against the skin and inhales cedar wood and pine. “You smell so good, stay here.”_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

_________But Hannibal easily dislodges himself, and leaves Will to curl up on himself, his hand on Winston’s muzzle when the dog rests his head on the couch. He’s tsked away by Hannibal, who returns with towels, and it’s only then that Will begins to feel the cold he’s exposed himself too, the shivers shaking through his core as Hannibal tugs his wet t-shirt and boxers off him._ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

_________“Come,” Hannibal says, pulling him almost upright. “I have run a bath for you, it’s the safest way to adjust your temperature.”_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

_________“The bath’s for the dogs, Han.” Will can only talk by keeping his teeth clenched against the tremors. “It’ll be filthy. I don’t use it.” And he doesn’t shorten Hannibal’s name either, does he?_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

_________“I can assure you it’s clean Will, come on. I could carry you but I would rather not.”_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

_________“Did you clean my bathroom?”_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

_________“Not tonight Will, no.”_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

_________Hannibal did practically have to lift him in to the bath though, and the air left Will’s lung in a rushed sigh as the water covered him to his collar bones._ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

_________“Han, it’s cold, it’s freezing”_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

_________“It’s warm Will, you will get used to it in a moment.” Hannibal kept his arm cradled beneath his shoulders, Will’s head leaning in towards him as he closed his eyes and let the water take the weight of his limbs. Hannibal washed him gently, made him rest his feet on the side of the tub after, to keep the cuts out of the water._ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

_________“How do you feel, Will?”_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

_________“Sore. Exhausted.”_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

_________“Warm?”_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

_________“Warm.”_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

_________“Good. Do you think you can stand on your own?”_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

_________“No.”_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

_________Hannibal pulled him up, wrapping him in a towel and hooking his arms around him, helped him lift each leg over and out of the bath. Will winced and nearly lost his balance as his full weight went onto a deep cut on the sole of his foot._ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

_________“I will need to wrap that one I think, though it shouldn’t need stitches.”_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

_________“First aid kit. Kitchen.” Will said, leaning almost entirely on the other man._ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

_________“Yes Will.” he replied, because of course he knew but Will had no idea how or why he knew._ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

_________Afterwards, when Will is dry and dressed in clean underwear, Hannibal sat on the bed beside him, his hand resting on his curls._ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

_________“Get into bed. Stay here.” Will said, sleepy and exhausted with eyes closed and mouth loose._ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

_________“I don’t think that’s a good idea, Will.”_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

_________“Don’t care. Stay. You smell good. Make me good.”_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

_________The bed dipped and an arm circled him, pulled him tight back against a solid body, and fingers stroked through his hair as he lost consciousness._ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

_________Will woke up the next afternoon feeling like his head was splitting in two. Hannibal wasn’t there, and it looked as though he never had been. No tyre tracks in the snow, the first aid kit left messily strewn across the cabinet, the bath with it’s ever present dog hair tideline from it’s last user, the bandages on his feet lumpy and applied with no precision or ability._ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

_________Now, as Will looked down at the street beneath his hotel room, he realised that Hannibal had of course been there. He had been there before, inducing a seizure or further twisting his words deeper into Will’s burning mind, that was why he’d gotten back to the house so quickly. Will must have awoken in a panic after Hannibal had left, or else had had another sleep walking episode soon afterwards. He’d made a shoddy job of the bandages on Will’s feet, had even bathed one of the dogs before he left so the bath was back to normal. It had been real._ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

_________Which meant all of it had been real. Including Will’s lips resting comfortably on Hannibal’s skin, his use of an affectionate shortening of his name, Hannibal’s fingers combing through his hair as he fell asleep in his arms._ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Will remembers some of what he chose to forget. Also tries to catch Hannibal and manages to bollocks it up because FEELINGS.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hannibal and those damn roofies....
> 
> Super short instalment because otherwise I won't get anymore written.

The temptation of luxury. Luxury goods can be purchased from a thousand websites and delivered in any number of untraceable ways. Hannibal could get hold of anything anonymously using proxies and pseudos and whatever format Silk Road was currently using, and that was assuming he didn’t have access to the Deep Web. Anything hard enough to obtain to warrant that level of precaution would be impossible to link back to him. And in Italy Hannibal would be able to easily buy any gourmet ingredients for cash and no need for contact details.

Will sat in the covered walkway outside the Uffizi watching the sparrows bickering on the paving stones. The morning was cool, and the museum wouldn't open for another hour. The sun had risen lemon-gold, setting the river to sparkle as Will had walked past the Ponte Vecchio. He'd lingered on the bridge the previous day, sure that Hannibal would avoid the tourist trap, and it gave him the chance to watch the regular comings and goings at the gallery. He knew Hannibal would be unable to resist visiting the masterpieces there, but would be wary of places with CCTV and security until after the FBI had done their sweeps of the most likely places he may have fled. Which was why Will hadn't told anyone he was coming to Italy. 

The ubiquitous street artists were setting up their easels, laying out their wares and awaiting visitors who would pay over the odds for a picture of beautiful buildings and bridges because it had been drawn in close proximity to iconic art. Will watched a large dark haired man shade in the shadows on his paper, a stump of a cigarette above the charcoal, rubbing in the ash which dropped on it. 

A young blond woman was sat on a step, legs crossed and back curved over the board she worked on. A canvas bag was beside her, contents spilling out but pencils and charcoal sticks lined up neatly. Her long hair caught the light, flashed bronze as she flicked it back to reach for a chamois and rub at a section of her sketch. She was probably a student of the nearby Academy, engrossed in her work and unaware of much else around her. Will wandered closer, saw she was sketching the pillars and statue which made up that part of the outer wall. Freehand, but with the skill of a draftsman she had drawn the straight lines of the classical architecture, and sketched in the stone figure in the alcove with broad curves and small details, using the white of the paper against the shade of the lowlights to make it appear three dimensional. He had seen Hannibal draw this way, effortless and precise, although she seemed to lean into it as though she were pouring herself onto the page. She paid no attention to Will as he stood watching, either used to observers or able to blank them out. 

“Scusi,” he said quietly. 

“I speak English.” she replied, not looking up. So she had known he was there.

“Oh. Do you mind if I ask you a question about your sketch?”

She turned towards him, green eyes and inquisitive frown as she pushed her hair behind her ear, leaving a grey smudge on her temple. 

“Why do you use charcoal and not pencil?”

“That’s like asking why you eat steak rare instead of medium.” she laughed, voice quick and skipping over her words, her accent tugging at the vowels. “With a pencil you have precision and you can draw a perfect line, but it doesn’t feel the same. Why do you ask me?”

“My, er. Friend, he draws pictures, like yours they’re very good. I wanted to get him a gift, some materials for his artwork, I’ve seen him use pencils but I don’t draw, I don’t know what to buy.”

“Ah. Well, it’s a preference, it’s personal. But charcoal is special, you take it dead and burnt from the ground and through your hand you pull life out of the paper. It’s expressive and messy and beautiful, but you can get charcoal pencils and can do nearly the same, see here I have some. They’re cleaner, precise, and you get the same sort of picture at the end.”

“Where do you buy your charcoal and pencils?”

—————————

Will sat at a tiny table on the pavement outside a cafe, sipping his coffee and pretending to read an Italian newspaper. The entrance to the alley opposite was narrow, but wide enough that he had a clear view of the art shop half way down. He knew Hannibal would buy his supplies there as soon as he’d seen the window display. They had easels and artists smocks in the style of Di Vinci - it would amuse him. 

Will had been in Florence for a week, and had seen no evidence that Hannibal was also here. But he could almost feel him, knew he had to be. The long days and longer nights had given him more than enough time to figure out what he would do once he found him, but he had gotten no further than ‘finish it’, and he hadn’t challenged himself about what ‘it’ was. 

His assumed proximity had tugged the memories from Will, clearer than before. When he left prison he’d stopped trying to remember, he was so focussed on setting himself up as the man Hannibal wanted him to be. He was so focussed on the hatred he felt for him, pure and powerful, despised Hannibal for what he had done to him. Although it didn’t take a psychological profiler to work out the root of that hatred was in the betrayal itself, not in the consequences it had brought. A betrayal that ran deeper than friendship.

He remembered that Hannibal closed his eyes when he came. In contrast to the rest of the time, when he seemed to drink in the sight of Will’s body and it’s reactions to him. It made his gut twist with shame, and his heart wrench for the loss of it. It wasn’t like remembering the psychic driving, those memories of Hannibal’s level tone and the flashing lights were painful, like getting an electric shock and pulling back before you’d even registered it. These memories were slow and easy, like someone describing a extra day spent on his boat on the bayou which he had forgotten until they reminded him. 

He remembered Hannibal sat on the bed, one knee pulled up and chin resting on it, naked in the lamplight. He remembered teeth dragging along his shoulder, breath wet on his neck and a solid hand beneath his jaw pulling his head back, remembered giving in completely to that feeling which surged through him in a way he hadn’t been able to in years. Remembered going back to Wolf Trap and seeing Alana, the punch to the stomach he felt when he realised she was sleeping with Hannibal. That was probably when he’d decided remembering wasn’t such a great idea anymore. 

Will saw Hannibal over the top of his paper. It was the back of his head, but he recognised the way he moved instantly. He held the shop door open for someone who was leaving, polite smile in place as he entered. 

Will felt like a hole had just opened up in his chest for his heart to fall through. A cold sweat broke out above his lip and he realised the newspaper was shaking in his hand. 

He had to wait it out, wait until Hannibal came back out again and then follow him. 

——————-

Will was trying to keep half a streets distance, but the winding medieval alleyways made it impossible and he had to stay closer than he wanted. Hannibal carried the brown paper package beneath his arm. He wore lighter clothes, loose trousers and a linen shirt which moved in the breeze. His hair was slightly longer, casual in the way he pushed it back. 

Will had heard nothing by white noise since he’d seen him, only his own blood pumping behind his ears, his thoughts entirely focussed and completely empty of everything except the compulsion to feel Hannibal’s flesh give beneath his hands. He felt the handle of the knife against his hip as he walked. 

He was too focussed on keeping sight of him, too blinkered when he followed Hannibal around a tight corner and into a small courtyard. Will stopped suddenly when Hannibal was no longer in front of him, and too late realised what had happened, too late to turn or run or sidestep the blow to the side of the head. He sank forward, strong arms around his waist before his knees hit the cobblestones, and then nothing. 

—————————-

“When did you realise there was no animal in your chimney?” Hannibal poured the coffee into two mugs. 

“When I kissed Alana. I needed to feel something real.” Will replied, leaning heavily on the kitchen island. “Thanks. For the coffee, sorry I didn’t realise it was so early, I probably shouldn’t have come by - ”

“Did kissing Alana feel real?” Hannibal looked up at him to silence the apology. 

“Her immediate rejection did.”

They shared a half smile. Will sighed and blew on the hot liquid. The fabric of Hannibal’s dressing gown looked as rich as the coffee smelt.

“I anticipated her rejection. Maybe that was the reality I was trying to grasp at.”

“Do you define your reality by other people’s rejection of it?”

“Hm.” Will snorted a laugh. “If I believed my reality was only experienced by me then I would be delusional at best, schizophrenic at worst. No, I am generally all too aware of the reality I share with other people.”

“But sometimes you are not.”

“No. Sometimes I am not.”

Hannibal took an audible sip of coffee and watched Will forlornly consider his own. 

“The knowledge you possess from your background in Psychology is a double edged sword, Will. It has given you the insight to recognise and analyse your thought processes, but it has also given you the ability to question them in ways which others are not capable. It blinds you to the obvious conclusion you would now be drawing if I were to describe your symptoms to you as though they belonged to someone else.”

“And what would that ‘conclusion’ be, Dr. Lector?” That un-smile flashed across Will’s face, lingered in a grimace curling his mouth.

“That you are suffering from an as yet undiagnosed mental health problem. You are experiencing auditory and visual hallucinations, you are losing time and you are experiencing vivid moments of un-reality that can be described as delusional.”

Will put his cup of coffee down when he realised his knuckles had gone white. 

“I say this as your friend, Will.”

“Not as my psychiatrist.”

“I tend not to diagnose patients while still wearing my housecoat.” 

“Are you diagnosing me?”

“I am giving you my professional opinion. As a friend.”

“And what would your advice be. As a friend.”

“I would advise you to keep some form of record. A diary perhaps, to record and monitor these episodes.” Hannibal took a longer drink of coffee, watching Will over the cup.

“And as my psychiatrist you would have a professional interest in those diaries.”

“Only in as much as they could inform me of your condition.”

Will rubbed his face with both hands, sighing deeply. He walked over to the glass doors leading to the garden. He’d never been in this garden before. Hannibal must hire a gardner, there was no way he could keep the garden and the house in such immaculate condition by himself.

“They would be very boring. ‘Woke up at 3am - changed the sheets. Woke up at 5am - didn’t bother trying to get back to sleep. Fed the dogs. Went to work. Came home. Stayed up as long as possible to try and exhaust myself and avoid nightmares. Woke up at 1am.’ I doubt even you would be interested beyond the first few entries.”

“What do you dream about, Will?”

“You know what I dream about.” Will replied quietly, closing his eyes and resting his forehead against the cold glass. 

“You have told me some of your dreams. Not all.”

Will thought of the dreams he wouldn’t ever tell Hannibal. The ones which sometimes felt more real than his waking moments. 

“Have we -” Will began. “Have you ever been out to my place at night?”

“Why do you ask?” Hannibal replied after a pause. Will looked at his own reflection an inch from his face.

“I leave all the lights on sometimes, and walk out towards the woods. When I turn back the house looks like a boat on the water. I can’t remember if you’ve ever seen it.”

“You called me once, when you discovered yourself sleep walking. I drove out to make sure you were alright.”

“Did you.” It wasn’t a question. 

“Don’t you remember?”

“I don’t know what I remember anymore.” Whispered now, frowning with eyes closed. 

“Will.” Hannibal’s voice was calm, closer as he approached him. “Here. Drink your coffee.”

Will remained as he was, eyes closed. He pressed his body against the glass when Hannibal placed a hand on the small of his back, opened his eyes to see their blurred reflections through the mist his breath had made on the door. The hand remained, reassuring and stabilising. Will heard hooves stamp into the lawn outside. There was a feeling making itself known at the back of his mind, beginning to rise like a siren getting closer, and the stag stood in front of him, clearer and more defined than the refracted image he and Hannibal made, merged together in the glass. 

“No on touches me.” Will said quietly, unaware he’d said it at all until the hand on his back tensed.

“Would you prefer that I didn’t? You need only say so, Will.”

“No, that’s not what…” He closed his eyes again, his mind lurching clumsily like he’d just woken up. “Why can’t I -”

“Will, here. Take your coffee.” Hannibal gently turned him around away from the door, placed the mug in his hand and lifted it towards Will’s mouth in Will’s sudden pliant confusion. Will took a drink and then paused, frowning.

“No, people don’t touch me. They never have, not beyond politeness, a handshake or - but you do now and you didn’t use to either.”

“Come and sit down, Will.” Reassuring, forcefully persuasive without seeming to be. A hand between Will’s shoulder blades.

“No, you’re not listening!” Will twisted away from Hannibal, turned to face him again with the corner of the island between them and slammed the cup onto the granite, sloshing coffee onto the floor. Hannibal’s expression was blank then, the crack of porcelain instantly turning his whole body poised and taut. “People don’t touch me Hannibal, they just don’t because I don’t fit with the social interactions they know how to deal with, they don’t touch me because they think I’ll either bite or break, and I like it that way because physical contact is too much.”

“Will, I need you to calm down.” Hannibal’s voice was steady and low, like a metronome. 

“Why are you talking like that?” Will found he was leaning heavily on the kitchen island as he had the door, realised his legs felt loose and unstable. He clumsily sank into the chair beside him, tried to hold his head in his hand but missed and felt Hannibal hold him upright from where he knelt before him on the floor. 

“Hannibal. You’re my gauge.” Will wanted to say objectivity but his tongue was too thick. “You touch me, and you only would if you had my permission, if I’d given it to you, or if I’d initia- started it. Why can’t I remember why I’m happy to let you touch me?”

Hannibal looked at him, face unreadable, then a smile small and fond as he pushed fallen hair back from Will’s face and cradled the back of his head in his hand. Will felt his eyes closing, his vision blurring at the edges. 

“Hannibal,” Will swallowed heavily as things began to fall into place. “Did you put something in my coffee?”

“A mild sedative.” Hannibal replied, as though it were cream. “I will help you to the lounge so that you can lay on the coach."

“Why - why did you give me a sedative?”

“It’s an essential component of the type of psychic driving treatment I am using with you.”

“I didn’t - I wound’t agree to that form of treatment.” Will forced his lips to move around the words, struggling to sit up.

“Which is another reason for the sedative. You have so much potential, Will. You must give yourself permission to use it. Free yourself from the petty ideal of morality you’ve had to cling to for so long.”

“How long have you been doing this to me?”

“Long enough to know that it is the right thing for you. You can never be happy until you embrace your true nature, allow yourself to become intimate with your instincts.”

“Intimate? Really?” Will huffed a mirthless laugh. “I remember being - in bed with you, is this how you -”

“Will.” Sharp enough for Will’s eyes to open to see Hannibal stern and sincere suddenly. He grabbed Will’s jaw, pressed his fingers to hollow his cheeks and gripped hard enough that the scrape against his teeth hurt. 

“I have never taken advantage of a person sexually. That you choose to routinely forget our relationship has progressed in such a way is nothing to do with my influence.”

Will’s eyes drifted shut away from the image of Hannibal’s face, demanding with his voice sharp and insistent. 

“You keep telling yourself that, Doctor.” Will said half laughing, anger leaking into his voice in sarcasm. “Whatever helps you sleep at night.”

————————-


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Confrontations and conversations. And an ultimatum. Plus smut.
> 
> This is the last chapter but there will be an epilogue.

Will suddenly became aware of where he was and what he was doing as though he’d been walking around with his eyes closed and had only just opened them. His hand was pressed into the back of Hannibal’s neck, Hannibal’s face was half obscured by the pillow and working hard against the animalistic noises he was trying to suppress, and Will was so deep inside him that his hip bones were digging harsh into Hannibal’s ass. 

Will’s breath was stuttering, and as he tried to slow it Hannibal noticed the sudden change in it’s rhythm and the tension in Will’s body. He moved his head against the pressure of Will’s hand, trying to see Will’s face. Will didn’t know why, but he didn’t want to let him see, so he pressed harder and felt the give of his trachea beneath his palm, heard the breath gently rattle in Hannibal’s throat.

“Will,” Hannibal’s voice was gravel.

“Shut up.” His own voice wasn’t much better, foreign to him and racked with desire. Hannibal tried to swallow around Will’s hand, closed his eyes and took a slow breath.

“Will, this is - ”

“I said shut up.” Will pushed him harder into the bed, grabbed Hannibal’s wrist and twisted his arm behind his back at a cruel angle, forcing a pained groan from him. “What did you do to me?” he hissed as Hannibal twisted against the pull of his shoulder, angling his hips as he did so. The sudden tightening around Will’s cock made them both groan unintentionally, and Will couldn’t stop himself from pressing deeper, began to pull out again before he forced himself to freeze.

“Hannibal, what have you done?” he asked, on some level aware of the absurdity of the question given their respective positions. 

“Will, you came here of your own accord,” his voice rushed, uncharacteristically open and raw. “I didn’t realise you were disassociating until a moment ago - ”

“Bullshit.” Will spat, shifting his hand to angle Hannibal’s face deeper into the pillow, making it impossible for him to breath. “What the fuck have you been doing to me?” 

Will watched Hannibal’s cheek redden with the lack of oxygen, saw it spread across his temple and over his forehead. He could kill him, he realised, he could just keep pressing and that would be enough to kill him. The power of it surged through him, made him dizzy with it, the knowledge that he could end Hannibal’s life, snuff it out and walk away. He felt alive, untouchable and just, so firmly anchored in the moment he could barely imagine how he’d been so lost and drifting for so long. He leant forward, forcing Hannibal deeper into the pillow and pressed his face against Hannibal’s jaw, breathing through gritted teeth. Hannibal arched his back against the movement, forcing Will’s hips to slide against his ass and shifting his cock in deeper. 

The white hot pleasure of it pulled Will back from the moment, and he slid his hand from Hannibal’s neck, pulled him free of the pillow and spread his fingers across his sternum, supporting him above the bed. Hannibal spluttered, choking coughs until he managed to get a breath in, and Will felt the reality of the situation pour over him like ice water. He began to pull out of Hannibal and made to get up, but Hannibal’s hand shot around and grabbed his hip, held him in place.

“Will, nesustok.” his voice near broken, more of a harsh whisper. “Don’t stop, God, please don’t stop.”

Will stilled for a moment at the sound of a word he didn’t understand, but the unchecked desire in Hannibal’s voice drove him on, and he grabbed hold of Hannibal’s thighs to pull him backwards, stood up with the mattress against his knees as he bent Hannibal forward to lean on his elbows. He began to drive into him, gasping with the heat and tightness of it, with the quiet moans and hissed unrecognisable words Hannibal muttered. Will gripped his fingers around Hannibal’s shoulder, pulling him back to meet each thrust, his own mouth dragging sounds from his throat, and Hannibal moved Will’s hand around his neck and pressed himself forward into it’s grip to choke the breath from him as Will drove his cock deeper. Will groaned, barely able to contain the rising tide inside him, suddenly so close he felt he could hover on the point of orgasm forever, could come just from the feeling of Hannibal’s throat giving beneath his hand. And then Hannibal pulled his knees beneath him, angling his hips so each thrust hit his prostate and his breath gasped loudly under Will’s fingers. Will slid his other hand along Hannibal’s side, gripped his cock and worked it in time to his hips and Hannibal cried out, dropping his head to press his throat harder against Will’s palm.

“Now, Han.” Will panted. “Come now.”

Hannibal’s orgasm tore through him, strained sounds pulled from him as his body squeezed around Will’s cock, pushing him over the edge as Hannibal’s hand pressed Will’s grip harsher against his own throat, gasping small groans around it. Will pulsed deep inside him, collapsed down against Hannibal’s back, pushed his mouth against his skin as though he could slip inside him completely, be enveloped by him and slot between his ribs. 

Will came back to himself with the feeling of Hannibal’s lips gently moving against his fingers, placing small wet kisses along the length of each one. The familiar tenderness of it hit him like a punch to the stomach, and he pulled back out and off of Hannibal, suddenly confused by the condom he was wearing. There wasn’t enough air in the room, it hung heavy with the smell of sex and fresh sweat, and he threw the window open leaning heavily on the sill, trying to get a lungful of breath.

He calmed his breathing, felt the cold air hold him in the moment, felt his feet against the thick carpet, felt his dick shrink against the latex, felt his stomach twist with something dark and wordless. 

He looked over his shoulder, saw Hannibal led on his side, hand resting beneath his cheek as he met his gaze. His face placid and still, eyes calm and unreadable. Hannibal stretched his arm our across the bedsheets towards Will, left his hand palm up and open in quiet invitation. Will saw his own hand reaching out towards Georgia Madchen where she curled beneath his bed, reaching out to her to show her she was alive. He didn’t remember telling Hannibal that, yet there he was mirroring the action to bring Will back to him and to himself. 

Will saw his clothes strewn across the floor on the other side of the bed, quickly and silently got dressed and heard Hannibal turn over to face him again. Will didn’t look back as he left the room, left the door open for Hannibal to watch him leave. And for the samurai armour to stare back at Hannibal, it’s gaze as empty as Will’s eyes had been when he’d arrived on the doorstep an hour earlier. 

——————

Will inhaled the green scent of fresh cut flowers, could tell from the distance and direction of the noises outside that he was a few floors up. There was the sound of water running into a metal sink and he tried to turn his head towards it, and then he felt the pain radiate from his forehead like a drumbeat. He tried to bring up his hands to hold his head, but they wouldn’t move, his wrists were bound by his sides to the arms of the chair he was sat in, his ankles tied to the legs and further ropes across his chest and stomach anchoring him in place.

He opened his eyes against the terror quickening through his body, blinked back against the too bright sunlight making the wooden floors glow amber. He coughed, his throat tight and his tongue too thick in his mouth. 

“Ah, dear Will.” Hannibal’s voice from across the room, and the water stopped running. “You’re awake. Here, I’ve made you some tea. Lemon and ginger, to counteract any nausea that blow to the head may have caused.”

Hannibal appeared next to him, feet bare under loose linen trousers and a similar shirt open over a vest. He held out a steaming cup as though Will could take it from him. Will looked beyond him, saw the dark wooden beams in the low sloping ceilings, the open plan wood paneling of the respectably furnished attic they seemed to be in. A set of doors opened onto a tiled balcony, and the air carried in the noise of the scooters and Italian voices from below.

“Where is this?” Will asked, frowning at how hard it was to speak.

“This is my apartment, here in Florence. A pleasant attic space with a charming view, room to grow herbs on the balcony.” He placed the cup down on the small table beside Will and sat in the adjacent chair, voice warm and almost jovial but with a tension at the edges. “A small kitchen, unfortunately, which limits what can be done in it. And a definite lack of basement, which also limits what can be done in the kitchen.” A sly smile at that, a joke from well trodden territory which could now be made in the open without consequence. 

Will looked up at him warily, head hanging forward from the strain of holding it up. He instinctively tested the ropes holding him in place, but there was no give in them. Hannibal picked up the cup again, held it up towards Will’s mouth and gestured for him to drink.

“What have you put in it?” Will asked.

“Nothing, Will.” Hannibal smiled fondly, though it didn’t reach his eyes. “I really have no need to sedate you given your current position, do I?”

Reluctantly Will took a sip, and then realised his throat was painfully dry and drank more, chasing after the cup as Hannibal pulled it away.

“Not too fast.” Softly, as Will would gently reassure one of the dogs, and that thought hit him with a bone-aching sense of homesickness he hadn’t felt since he was kid and he and his Dad had to leave the house they’d shared with his mother. He felt his chest contract around it, coughed and let his head fall forward. 

“What are you going to do?” he asked quietly, eyes closed. A desperate panic was growing at the edges of his vision and he had to shut it out to stop from screaming. Hannibal was silent, placed the cup back on the table and sat back in the chair. 

“What were you planning on doing once you found me, Will?” he asked, voice dangerously calm.

“I don’t know.” Will signed, turning his head away as though that would make a difference. 

“You had some idea, I’m sure. Why else did you come?”

“Maybe I just got bored of waiting to hear about bodies turning up in Europe missing organs.” Will’s Southern drawl came out with his angry sarcasm, pulling at the words as he turned to glare at him. Hannibal met his stare blankly.

“You are still angry that I am the person you did not want me to be.”

“Go fuck yourself.”

Hannibal moved quicker than should be possible, was behind Will’s chair before he could blink and harshly grabbed a handful of hair. He yanked Will’s head back, leaning so the chair lurched forward on the front two legs, held from falling only by the hair which set Will’s scalp screaming.

“Don’t be vulgar, Will.”

Hannibal released him and allowed the chair to settle back again. Will tried to bite back the pained exclamation which leapt from him, rested his head against the back of the chair and closed his eyes. He heard Hannibal walking away towards the kitchen area, heard a bottle being angrily opened and a cupboard door closed with force. 

“Hannibal.” Will began quietly, wanting to stay in the safety of his eyes darkness. “Han, Abigail is dead.”

Something slammed against the sideboard and Will recoiled against the noise of a cup smashing to the floor. Tears welled up behind his closed lids and when he screwed his eyes shut tighter they rolled down his cheeks. Hannibal was still and silent in the kitchen. 

“I know.” His voice was unreadable, and it sounded like he held a hand against his face.

“You said we were her fathers. We were supposed to look after her. And you killed her.”

“Do not remove your own responsibility from her death.” Hannibal said bitterly, more emotion in his voice than Will was used to hearing. “We were supposed to look after her, yes. You and I. But that was of less importance to you in the end than trying to trap me on Jack’s behalf, to allow yourself to be used by him in such a clumsy and pointless way.”

“Oh my God,” Will laughed harshly, tears still staining his eyes as he turned and finally looked towards Hannibal. “Can you actually hear yourself? What do you think actually happened in your house that night? I called you to tell you to leave! I didn’t even know Abigail was alive then, you could have taken her with you and gone and then she would be safe now.”

“What I did was a direct result of the way in which you betrayed me, you are just as culpable for the damage that was done.”

“Bullshit! You got caught, Han. You fucked up and you got caught because you’re not as clever as you think you are. So you threw a hissy fit and tried to kill all the people who’d had the audacity to call you up on your crap. Because the great Hannibal Lector can’t be forced into admitting he’s just as human as everyone else, just like the great Chesapeake Ripper can’t let anyone else take credit for his work!” 

Hannibal stared blankly at the space beside Will’s head, while Will shouted at him directly in some odd role reversal, as though Hannibal were the one tethered helplessly and unable to get away from the angry tirade. 

“Will,” he began, low and steady.

“You were never going to let me be convicted of those murders, and not for the reasons you told yourself afterwards, not because you hoped to draw out of me some base animal nature to match your own cruelty. You couldn’t stand the idea of someone else getting the credit for your work.” Bitter now, heavy with contempt. “Hell, you probably planned that fucking blood bath of a Greek tragedy from scratch just so you could get away and the world would know Chilton wasn’t really the Ripper.”

“Will, stop.”

“Do you actually believe your own God complex, is that it? That a betrayal against you is blasphemy? That’s it, isn’t? With the Ripper you could be God, judge those less worthy and then laugh in your own smug self-assurance as Hannibal the socialite served up their sins in gourmet mouthfuls to the well-to-do of Baltimore, to the fucking head of Behaviour Sciences at the FBI.”

Hannibal closed his eyes, and Will didn’t even notice he’d put his hand in his pocket until he saw the dull glint of the linoleum knife in his hand. It caused a stillness to catch his breath, allowed him to sidestep his anger and remember the reality of the situation.

“I know how you chose them, the Ripper’s victims.” he said, lowering his voice. “They insulted you in some way - personally or because of something they did. Or because of their influence on something you thought them unworthy of touching.” 

Hannibal inhaled deeply and slowly let the breath out, as though to calm himself.

“Yes. Simple really.” he said, lightness forced into his voice which didn’t match his dark expression. He came back and sat down, placed the knife on the table in perfect parallel with the edge. “An easy explanation difficult to accept for it’s elegant banality. Tasteful.”

“Petty.” Will spat. “And self-indulgent. Uninteresting.” He let the barbed word sink in for the painful effect he intended.

“Though still interesting enough to pursue, no?” Hannibal said, slowly with half a smile. “Interesting enough to steal this knife from it’s evidence box. Still interested in recapturing that intimacy, Will? Beware your own expectations.” 

“Any ‘intimacy’ which existed between us was as one sided as your choice of therapy. I would not have consented to either.”

“You did not consent to the therapy, no. But any - physical - intimacy which occurred was at your initiation, within your control always. You refuse to accept responsibility for that just as you refuse to accept responsibility for the role you played in Abigail’s death and the harm done to Alana and Jack.”

“No, you can’t do that.” Will shook his head, tried to move his arms in frustration. “You can’t blame me for the decisions you made, for the actions you carried out of your own free will.”

“Yet you are doing the same to me when you accuse me of taking advantage of you. I can assure you, when you do choose to remember the correct order of events, you will see quite the opposite was true.”

Will’s eyes snapped up at that, saw in Hannibal’s eyes he had too late realised the depth of truth behind that admission. 

“Do you know how you caught me, Will?” he asked, voice made lighter and leaning back in the chair in an attempt to appear casual. 

“You revealed enough of yourself to me.” Will replied quietly, trying to centre his thoughts, trying to focus on the current conversation and not follow his mind back to where it was trying to take him. “You underestimated my ability to deceive you.”

“Wrong on both counts.” Hannibal rose from the chair, all grace and poise as he returned to the kitchen and refilled the kettle. “We are alike. The same. That is why you could see me. You see yourself refracted.” 

Will scoffed and shook his head, but found he had no words to counter with. Hannibal was back on confident ground, unfaltering now after his unintentional slip. 

“Did you know,” he began, the same tone he would use to explain the symbolism of some meal he was preparing. “That when the Europeans began trading mirrors with the Native Americans they did not conceptualised the glass as a way to study their reflections, but as adornments for clothes and jewellery. Self-examination is difficult, especially when we do not like what we see, and requires a level of self-centredness you lack. The stag which pursued your mind was not me, Will. It was yourself, a projection of what it is which binds us together.”

“Maybe I was wrong, Han. It was obviously your arrogance that got you caught. Although generally the one doing the catching isn’t the one who ends up being gutted.”

Will watched the half smile on the side of Hannibal’s face he could see. He put the kettle back on to boil, continued to move things around in the kitchen as though this were a picture of normal domesticity. 

“You are a good fisherman, Will. Didn’t you ever wonder what would happen if the fish were able to fight back?”

“Jesus Christ, Han.” Will sighed, letting his head hit the back of the chair. “Stop fucking dancing around and just do whatever it is you’re going to do. I’ve been inside your head enough times to know what you’re capable of. You take your pleasure in the fear you inflict, not in the fear of the anticipation of it. Just - just do it.”

“You allowed me to capture you today, Will. You did so because you could not bring yourself to face the choice you have been avoiding ever since you killed Garret Jacob Hobbs.” Hannibal said quietly, back still turned away from him. “Killing me is the best option you have to ‘save lives’ - that noble cause you martyr yourself for. You know that even being incarcerated would not prevent me from killing. Yet killing me would be giving in to that deep instinctual drive inside you which you fear so much. You thought you were courting me with it, giving me teasing glimpses to lure me out of my anonymity. But I think you surprised yourself with how well you fit into your own skin, once you allowed yourself to see it.”

“That’s not true.” Will said, eyes closed and shaking head lowered, hating the forced certainty he heard in his voice.

“You are the only genuine threat to my being whom I have allowed to live, Will. And it is because that threat is worth the opportunity of seeing something truly beautiful emerge from the wreckage you have wrought.”

“Han, you sliced me open like one of your pigs, I was in a coma for weeks. You didn’t allow me to live, you tried to fucking kill me.”

“And yet you live. You think I don’t know how to kill a person if I wish them dead?” Hannibal walked slowly back towards the table, leant against it and casually crossed his arms, just as he had a hundred times during their conversations in his office in Baltimore. Will wondered where he kept all his books, all the bits of work he would still be doing. There wasn’t a single book in the entire apartment, now that he knew he could see all of it from where he sat. 

“You didn’t manage to kill Jack or Alana.” Will retorted, trying to ignore his own petulance and focus on the thoughts trying to drag their way to the front of his mind.

“I did not wish them dead. Jack’s life now is far more punishing than his death would have been. And I never wished Alana any harm, I asked her to leave that night but she is as stubborn as you sometimes and refused. If you remember she was only ever involved because you tried to have me killed, so we are back to your consistent deflection of responsibility for the consequences of your actions.”

“Where are your books?”

“What?” Hannibal almost hid his confusion at the seemingly random question.

“Where are all you books, Hannibal?”

“Where you saw them last, back in Baltimore, along with all my other possessions. When I have been missing long enough to be declared legally dead that will all be sold, and the proceeds from the estate will be donated to a number of orphanages and education charities which work with disadvantaged children.”

Will laughed bitterly despite himself.

“Believe me, they won’t take it.” 

“Where are your dogs, Will?” Hannibal asked, a smug tilt to his lips when he sees the words hit home.

“Safe.” Will replied, looking away. “But where are your new books, your replacements of firm favourites, the classic texts you couldn’t bare to go without seeing, the replacements of your first editions. Your Darwin and Wallace, your Freud and Aurelius. You wouldn’t live somewhere without books, Han.”

Hannibal stared blankly at him, the tension around his lips the only indication of his annoyance.

“My books are downstairs.” he replied as thought the words tasted unpleasant. “I own the building, it came with this self-contained apartment.”

“I thought we agreed you wouldn’t lie to me.” Will said, chin held higher.

“Fine.” Hannibal said, sitting down again and adjusting his shirt sleeves, long despite the warmth of the air. “I have been devoting half my mind to running through various scenarios ever since I realised you were following me when I left the art supplies shop. My first thought was to kill you, obviously.”

“Obviously.” Will agreed sarcastically, but was silenced by the look Hannibal gave him.

“But now we are here I’m uncertain as how to proceed. Which is not a dilemma I am accustomed to. Of course, I could release you. The world is a more interesting place with you in it, after all. But that would mean relocating somewhere else, and I like it here. I had thought perhaps to resume your - therapy. But as I’m sure your aware, it is more rewarding to have a stray dog choose to stay by your side from trust rather than beaten obligation.”

“So you’re collecting stays now, Han? Is that was Abigail was to you as well?”

“There would have been room enough for the three of us here.” Hannibal said flatly, allowing the implications time to sink painfully into Will’s chest. 

Hannibal stood, walked to the other side of the apartment and took a leather case from a drawer. He returned with it and a glass of water, placed both on the table beside Will.

“I’m going to ask you to do something for me. The event will occur regardless of your response. I am giving you permission to accept where you would usually feel yourself forced to decline.”

The sarcastic response died in Will’s throat, and he simply lowered his head, eyes dark and resigned. Hannibal removed a vial of pills from the case, tapped two into his palm and held them up towards Will.

“These are sedatives, the same type you unknowing took previously. I’m going to ask you to take them willingly. To trust that in doing so you will find the completion to our dilemma you wish for but do not as yet have the courage to seek out for yourself.”

“And what is our ‘dilemma’, Hannibal?” Will asked mockingly, looking away.

“Whether one of us should kill the other, or find a way to make room for them in our own world.”

“You’re asking me to willingly be sedated while you decide if you’re going to kill me or not. You’re asking me to willingly take sedatives while bound immobile to a chair in a cannibal’s apartment.”

“I’m removing from you the burden of choice. You have refused to make the decision for yourself.”

“You are insane. You do know that, right?”

“Will you take these for me, Will?” Hannibal held the two pills between finger and thumb, brought them closer to his face.

Will’s jaw set stubborn with bitter anger. His eyes narrowed as he opened his mouth slowly, pressed his tongue flat and wide against his lower lip pushed forward as though to receive something else, in a cruel parody of the times he had knelt in front of Hannibal and wilfully taken his cock deep into this throat, lapped the cum from it afterwards. 

Hannibal’s blank expression twitched in recognition. He placed the pills on Will’s tongue, and Will quickly swallowed them dry, grimacing and refusing the water offered him.


	5. Epilogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What happened next.

Awareness returned to Will slowly, first in the dull deep ache in his head and a sharp creeping pain in his forearm. A soft breeze moved the curtain by the open window, dappling the sunlight through his eyelids. He was laying on his side on a bed, could smell ginger and flowers, and for a moment had no idea where he was or any desire to find out, content to just be still and feel the breeze and warm sun drape over him.

But the pain in his arm did not subside, and as it grew in his conciseness so did the tight dry sensation of his throat, a familiar feeling he hadn’t felt in a long time.He opened his eyes, blinking hard against the light, reached for the tall glass he saw on the cabinet beside him. Water with slices of ginger root floating beneath what remained of the ice cubes. The room shifted uncomfortably in his vision as he sat up, drank half the water quickly and then breathed deeply to catch his breath.

He looked down at his left arm to the cause of the pain and dropped the glass, spilling water all over the floor. He stood quickly, gasping and holding his arm, tried to back away as though he could leave it behind and tripped over his own sluggish feet, landing on his back sprawled over the floorboards.

Carved into the skin of his forearm were graceful lines, curving gently in places and stark straight in others, depicting in artistic simplicity the images of two stags almost superimposed on top of each other. Will choked on the breath he was holding and felt the pain of it wash over him even stronger now he knew it’s source, saw the small beadings of blood along the deeper lines where he had moved the skin, stared at the wounds as though his own disbelief would remove them. He had seen images like this before in photographs of cave paintings, animals depicted in charcoal and ochre tens of thousands of years ago.

He staggered to his feet, trying to calm his breath and saw the envelope on the table. In elegant script his own name was written above an elaborate line which branched into the letter H.

_My dear Will,_

_Our scars have the power to remind us the past was real. I realise it was remiss of me to give you a scar so easy to hide, from yourself and others._

_The ancient peoples of the last ice age were just as skilled artistically as the great masters. They depicted those animals most important to their lives, often projecting on to some the anthropomorphised hybrid spirits central to their belief systems. Chief amongst these was the stag, a talisman which remained with our ancestors until early modern history. In the Chauvet-Pont-d’Arc Cave the artists drew animals seemingly one on top of the other in different shades and colours. It was not until modern observers switched off their torches and returned the cave to it’s original lamp flame illumination that they realised the flickering light brought the paintings seemingly to life, the images forming one creature moving across the stone._

_You mentioned, though you will not remember doing so, that you found me in the Battistero di San Giovanni. It is a favourite example of the merging of Byzantine and Western art, and your blue devil became the archetype for the portrayal of Satan in art and literature echoing down the ages. But what he lacks, and what you are seeking, is the explanation you will find through Milton and Blake. That the devil is not external to humanity, but can be found within it and at it’s very core. You empathise with the motivations to commit acts others call evil - they project that which they cannot comprehend onto faceless forces so separated from themselves they can call them monsters and devils. You have the ability to transcend this, if you choose to, and achieve greatness by doing so._

_I do hope you make the right decision, Will._

_As always, your friend,_

_Hannibal._

————————

Hannibal Lector sat on a bench inside the Battistero, allowing the light to move the cool air through his mind. The calm eyes of Christ looked down at him, but Hannibal’s thoughts were elsewhere, thinking of Dante and his macabre Inferno, thinking of Blake and his sensuous portrayal of Lucifer before the fall. His thoughts subdued the roiling unrest in his gut, his instincts telling him to run.

There were relatively few visitors in the church at this time of day, and the occasional flash of a camera lit up the gold tiles in harsh white light. Hannibal thought about candle light, how it would have made the images in the friezes seem to move. He thought about a primal life, the smell of wood smoke and soil, stone tools slicing flesh from bone as elegantly as a fillet knife. He did not think about Will.

The panel of sunlight had arced over to the adjacent wall in the time he had been there when Will sat beside him. He lent forward with his elbows on his knees, letting his head hang between his shoulders. He wore the long sleeved shirt Hannibal had left for him, and beneath the cuff Hannibal saw the edge of surgical tape.

“You found the gauze.” he said quietly.

“Yes.” Will replied, voice unreadable.

Hannibal cleared his throat, shifted slightly sideways to face towards Will.

“The pain will be at it’s worse today and tomorrow, and will then begin to fade. You should ensure you do not get an infection -”

“Shut up.” Will interrupted tersely. “Just - shut up.”

They sat in silence for a time, and Hannibal allowed his mind to drift back to his library and his memorised copy of Blake, managed to ignore the growing glow in his chest caused by Will’s proximity.

“You didn’t use the linoleum knife.” Will said, voice still quiet.

“No.” Hannibal adjusted his shirt sleeves. “It required a scalpel’s precision.”

Will laughed bitterly, shook his head and finally raised it to look at the gold surrounding them.

“You will wear those scars for the rest of your life, Will. I had to -”

“You are always so Goddam sure of yourself. How do you know I’ll keep it? How do you know I won’t tear all the skin off my arm just to be rid of it, to be rid of you.”

“Because you do not want to be rid of me.” Hannibal straightened his back, the tension showing in the pull of his lips.

“I feel like you have violated me in every conceivable way. There is not one part of me you haven’t invaded, not one thing in my life you haven’t sullied in some way.” Will caught his breath before his voice rose, took off his glasses with a sigh and rubbed his face with both hands, pressing the palms against his eyes until he saw lights explode in the darkness.

“Yet you came here. To Florence. To the Battistero, here. To me.”

“I think that’s what’s referred to as ‘conditioning’.” Will’s eyes remained closed as he pressed the heel of his hand against his forehead.

“No, Will. Not conditioning. These are the choices you have made, the decisions you have taken which have led you here.”

Will shook his head, put his glasses back on and finally turned to look at Hannibal, who returned his gaze steadily, but with a softness in his eyes which tugged at him. Will had seen it before, on the occasions Hannibal had allowed himself to be seen as something other than the man or the monster who moved within him.

“Stay here Will, with me.”

Will saw that vulnerability then, veiled but visible, reaching out with a hand Will had already bitten.

“That’s a terrible idea, Han.”

“Only if you are afraid of what may happen.”

“I’m not afraid of you Hannibal, I never have been.” Will said, quickly without thinking until the words were spoken, when the truth of them turned his head to meet Hannibal’s eyes.

“No more or less so than you are afraid of yourself.” Hannibal spoke softly, placed a hand gently on Will’s shoulder. “You fear the consequences of what you may do, but do not fear the act itself.”

“What will be the consequences? If I stay?”

“They will be many. But none of them worthy of your fear.”

Hannibal’s hand was cool against his back, soothing as his thumb moved back and forth. Will closed his eyes, felt the finality of the moment stretch, until he turned and rested his head on Hannibal’s shoulder, pressed his forehead to his neck.

——————

Will was dozing, happy to let the sun and the breeze warm and soothe his face as the car curved around the lazy bends and descents. When he did open his eyes on occasion it was to look at Hannibal in his sunglasses and linen suit, hair longer now and moved by the air rushing past. Hannibal’s lips twisted in a small smile when he realised he was being watched, let his hand drift from the gear stick to Will’s leg with a gentle squeeze.

“How much further, Han?” Will asked quietly.

“Not far now. Why do you ask? Is my company so tiresome?”

“Extremely, as always.” Will replied playfully. Hannibal gave him a look over his shades, and Will felt a spark inside his chest moving lower. He stretched within the confines of the seatbelt, shifted in his seat and let his arm fall onto the door of the open soft-top, his fingers dangling through the air as the car sped along.

They had reached a steady equilibrium, one which Will had anticipated would disintegrate in a short space of time. But on the third morning Will had woken to the smell of coffee and Hannibal’s soft glances from across the room, the reality of the situation didn’t twist his gut with anxiety. Instead it smoothed, some kind of certainty he hadn’t felt in half a lifetime slid into place.

They had spent the previous night in a small guest house, rural enough that they had taken two rooms instead of a double. After midnight when the proprietor and few other guest had all retired Will had stared into the soft darkness of his room, listening to the old building creek as it cooled from the day’s heat. He idly moved his fingertips over the raised scared lines on his forearm, fully healed now but still dark pink, the same shade as the inside of Hannibal’s mouth. He knew he wouldn't sleep with that thought in his head.

He'd reached for his phone on the bedside table and quickly typed a text.

_Are you awake?_

The reply had come within a minute.

_I am now, yes._

_I can't sleep._

_And are you determined to ensure I do not also?_

Will huffed a laugh at the first response which came to mind, and sent another.

_Is your door locked?_

_It will not be in a moment._

Will had walked soft footed across the corridor and twisted the lock shut on the inside of the door. He went over the to the bed, crawled up it until his hands were either side of Hannibal’s shoulders and the other man regarded him with raised eyebrows.

“Hi.” Will smiled.

“Hello, Will.”

Will had pulled the light sheet off of Hannibal, made his way back down the bed and tugged off Hannibal’s underwear, hands firm on his ankles as he pushed his feet up the mattress to leave his legs spread with knees bent. He trailed kisses down Hannibal’s thighs, pressed his mouth into the cleft of his ass, licked thick stripes into the flesh there. He glanced up to see the underneath of Hannibal’s jaw angled to the side where he braced his head back into the pillow, moans raising from deep in this chest as his breath quickened. Will slid his hands beneath his hips, lifted them from the bed to drive his tongue into the warmth of his body, Hannibal’s fingers shifting to tighten in Will’s hair as he gasped with the gentle breaching.

Will had lowered himself onto Hannibal’s cock later, leaning forward to bring their mouths together, knees tucked against Hannibal’s ribs. He moved slowly, pulling sounds out of Hannibal to swallow them down where their lips met, not quite kissing but softly quieting the other.

Afterwards, Will had moved to get up and return to his own room, but Hannibal had sleepily pulled him back to bed, muttering no one would notice in the morning, face slack with release, an expression Will knew few others had seen. He’d relented, curled up back in bed and slept with his fingers gently curled in Hannibal’s hair.

They turned a sharp corner and the orange roofs of the small city came into view. Hannibal steered the car from the main road and past the buildings with windows shuttered against the heat. Once they’d parked they made their way through the large tree-filled park to the chapel Hannibal had brought them there to see.

“Hey, do you know how close we are to Venice?” Will said, looking at the map on his phone. “

Yes.” Hannibal replied, adjusting his hair from where the breeze had moved it in front of his sunglasses.

“Well shall we go there tomorrow? It doesn’t look like a long drive.”

“Venice will be swarming with tourists. Unless you wish to spend the day bustling among the sweating and open-mouthed crowds, I suggest we wait until the end of the season.”

“You never went to a state fair, did you Han?”

“I don’t think that question requires an answer.”

The path had led them to a tall brick building which looked more like a barn than a church.

“Is that it?” Will asked, and then rolled his eyes as the sharp glare the question earned him.

“Yes Will, this is ‘it’. The Scrovegni Chapel.”

Hannibal spoke in very quick Italian to the man behind the ticket desk, and Will couldn’t follow the conversation but it somehow ended up with the two of them avoiding the queue and being ushered straight in.

Will was overwhelmed with blue. It seemed to bleed from the plaster, as though the frescos had been painted a moment ago. It took him a couple of minutes to adjust, to allow the myriad of scenes of people beneath the domed starry ceiling to settle in his view. He hadn’t noticed Hannibal had been staring at him the whole time.

“Why are you looking at me in the middle of all of this?”

“I’ve been here a number of times. Seeing them for the first time through your reaction is far more gratifying.”

“Careful Han, that was almost romantic.”

Will walked along the pied marble floor, stopping occasionally to look at a detail which caught his eye. Hannibal walked beside him, alternately looking at the painted walls and back at Will.

“There.” he said, pointing towards the far wall. “There is the next iteration of your blue devil.”

Will walked closer to the large depiction of the last judgement. It was immense, Christ boldly sat top centre surrounded by the gold of wings and halos. Angles fanned out beneath him, channeling sinners through flaming streams beneath them to the blue ogre of a devil. Horned, serpent eared and simultaneously consuming and excreting the broken bodies of the damned, surrounded by more sinners spit-roasted, suspended by hair and genitals, molested by demons.

“In an illiterate world people would have read these pictures.” Hannibal said, almost absentmindedly. “Would have believed this was the fate which would befall them if they did not obey the church.”

“We’re too desensitised by arbitrary horror to find this horrific, Han. It’s still beautiful but it’s lost it’s power to frighten in the modern age.”

“Some argue Giotto was the father of the Renaissance, and that the Renaissance erased Christ’s divinity to reveal his humanity. I think here he does the same for the devil. He paints him as a caricature, the scenes around him are horrific verging on ridiculous.”

Will turned his face towards Hannibal as he stepped closer, still looking at the fresco but with Hannibal in his periphery.

“You weren’t compelled to eat them, were you? It wasn’t the pivotal part of your design.” Will turned fully, met Hannibal’s eyes now turned shark blank. “You did it because you wanted to, not because you felt you had to.”

Hannibal’s face was passive as he looked back towards the wall, his voice still steady.

“If you humanise the God, you must also humanise the devil. There has never been a demon residing in hell waiting to devour the wicked, or a monster under the bed or in the cupboard or in the woods behind the house. There are only people, and the horrors they commit against each other.”

“How old were you, Han? When you saw that man was more horrific than the devil?”

“Elevan.”

Will returned his gaze to the painting, biting his lip to stop himself from asking the next question. They stood in silence for a time, until Will took a step closer and gently grasped Hannibal’s fingers in his own. Hannibal’s shoulders relaxed and the slight tension around his lips faded.

“This place is beautiful.” Will said quietly. “But I’m had enough of theology. Show me something beautiful and tangible.”

“There is a rather interesting botanical garden very close to here.” Hannibal replied, coming back to himself and squeezing Will’s hand before withdrawing his own.

“Great. And then?” Will asked, smiling.

“And then dinner.” Hannibal said, returning the smile.


End file.
